Facilitating Mixed Language Programming in Distrbuted Systems

An approach for facilitating mixed language programming in distributed systems is presented. It is based on adding a generic remote procedure call facility to each language, and the use of a type system to describe procedural interfaces, as well as data to be transferred between procedures. This type scheme also specifies a machine-independent representation for all data. By defining standard mappings for each programming language, the data conversions required for cross-langauge calls may be performed, automatically in most cases, by active agents that provide the interface between program components written in different languages. When necessary, explicit control of the conversation is possible. A prototype implementation of a system based on this approach has been constructed on a collection of machines running Berkeley UNIX®.